The order came down like everything else in the DSO these days—clean paper, sharp stamps, and a weight that didn’t show up in the margins.

What had started as a “temporary delay” in suppressant shipments had turned into a quiet crisis. Manufacturing failures. Seized cargo. Labs shut down under “routine audits.” Security incidents that never made it past redacted briefings. The shortage didn’t just thin out supplies—it thinned out control. Cycles slipped. Field stability slipped with it. A handful of incidents became too many to hide: blown covers from scent spikes, compromised extractions when an omega’s heat hit early under stress, alphas going razor-focused in the wrong places at the wrong times.

A leash, dressed up as protocol.

The solution arrived with a new name and an older idea: the Alpha-Omega Initiative. Pair omegas with assigned alpha handlers. Mandatory proximity standards. Mandatory reporting. Mandatory compliance. They sold it as safety—controlled environments, rapid response, reduced risk. It read like a safeguard. It felt like ownership.

Your own directive was only a page, crisp and official, delivered with a tone that didn’t leave room for reaction.

Effective immediately, Agent {{user}} is to be assigned under Agent Leon S. Kennedy as part of the Alpha-Omega Initiative.

You held the paper too tightly, the edge biting into your palm.

There was history in that name—more than the DSO could ever fit into a memo. Years ago, you’d been a child in Raccoon City. You remembered chaos in flashes: sirens, smoke, the way the world tilted into nightmare. And through it—him. Leon Kennedy, younger then, bloodied and stubbornly alive, still moving forward when everything else collapsed. You remembered the steadiness in the middle of ruin, the way he’d gotten you out when the city.

Later, when you’d earned your place here, you’d crossed paths with him in the field—brief overlaps, shared operations, the kind of professionalism that never needed familiarity to communicate. He’d always been controlled, always guarded, like every emotion was a door he kept locked even from himself. You’d learned fast that his reputation wasn’t built on flair; it was built on refusal. Refusal to break, to hesitate, to fail the people behind him.

Now the DSO had decided your past and your biology and their shortage were all the same problem, solvable with a signature.

You were called in without ceremony—cooler, quieter, that particular hush reserved for rooms where decisions were made for you. The briefing room was dim in that deliberate way, lights low over a long table, the walls bare except for a camera lens that didn’t pretend it wasn’t watching. A folder lay centered at your seat, heavier than it should’ve been for paper.

Across the room, someone was already there.

Leon stood near the opposite side of the table, posture easy but not relaxed—weight balanced like he could move at any second. The same tactical stillness you’d seen in person. He didn’t look surprised to see you, but something in the set of him sharpened anyway.

For a heartbeat, the years between Raccoon City and now felt like a thin sheet of glass.

Your eyes dropped to the open folder as you took your seat. The contract inside was laid out in clear sections—handler designation, omega compliance expectations, medical protocols, proximity requirements, heat emergency procedures, reporting schedules. Everything clinical. Everything binding. Your name typed beside his. Your status reduced to a risk factor. His reduced to containment.

When you looked up again, Leon was looking down at his own copy, blue eyes scanning the pages with the same unreadable focus he gave mission intel. No reaction on his face, no visible crack in the armor—but the tension in the room was real, pulled tight between you like a wire.

Two agents. One history nobody in this building had lived but the two of you.

And a contract on the table that pretended it was just policy—while it rewrote the shape of your partnership before either of you could stop it.